Community Challenge Makeover Monday 2020 Week 44:

My redesign (Tableau File Here):

Original Visualization:

Reading time: 5 min 13 secs

Community Challenge

#Viz5 – The Digital Gender Gap is the Makeover Monday 2020 Week 44 challenge and my first community challenge. It is the 9th visualization challenge of a 12 part series. The data is from the Inclusive Internet Index—a project from the Economist Intelligence Unit. The design objective is to illustrate the gender divide in access to the internet and mobile phones. Visualize Gender Equality Viz5 series goal is to promote the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 5. Goal 5 is achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

Why is Gender Digital Access Gap Important?

Internet access via computer or mobile phones is critical for learning and earning transformation. In 2020 currently, about half of the world's population does not have access to the internet; most are women. This gap is leaving them behind for health, education, and financial information and opportunities.

The Global Covid-19 pandemic highlights the importance of the digital gap. As businesses, schools, connection to friends/family, and information moved online, those without access to the internet have become left behind and isolated. Moving forward, opportunities afforded only to those with internet access will increase. We must reduce the digital gender access gap to the internet.

“Half of the world’s population does not have access to the internet, most are women.”

Gender Digital Access Gap

Vis5

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, Target 5.b, promotes women's empowerment through technology forms. This target's goal is to: "enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women." Vis5 Project's goal is to Visualize Gender Equality, promote this UN Goal using data advocacy, and inspiring work to realize gender equality. Led by Operation Fistula, Vis5 is a project in partnership with #MakeoverMonday and Tableau Foundation. Twelve themed data sets over 12 months will make up the Vis5 project set with #MakeoverMonday. Each data set will highlight a different area of gender inequality. To learn more about the project, sign up at www.vis5.org.

A subset from the Economist's Inclusive Internet Index data is the source of this months' challenge. The information is part of a project of the Economist's Intelligence Unit, and the dataset illustrates the gender lack of parity of access to the internet. This subset contains three key data calculations.

Gender gap in internet access; % difference
- (% Male access - % Female access) / % Male access
  - Indicator of the difference between women and men's access to the internet
  - Negative values mean women have greater access
  - Positive values mean men have greater access
Gender gap in mobile phone access; % difference
- (% Male access - % Female access) / % Male access
  - Indicator of the difference between women and men's access to mobile phones
  - Negative values mean women have greater access
  - Positive values mean men have greater access
Internet users; % of households
- This data represents the percentage of households with home internet access

“To be offline today means to miss out on learning and earning”

— World Wide Web Foundation

Project Discussion

Design Decisions

Color

No Pink. No Blue. Avoiding the stereotypic gender colors was the very first design decision. The reason for this was to move away from the typical gender roles/bias and allow the viewer exploration of the visualization in a neutral way. Males having greater access to the internet is an issue; I used yellow to represent men. Yellow is considered a warning color. I used yellow's complementary color of purple for female access. The black is used as the background color to make the bars of the radial bar chart pop and illustrate this negative or warning condition.

Charts

The next goal was to demonstrate the digital gender gap with one look. I looked at the data with many different chart types, including maps, bar charts, and bubble charts. None of the charts I tried gave a visual impact on the gap. I then built a radial bar chart. This chart was a success. In one chart, the viewer could see every country, each line's length indicating the scale of the gender digital gap for a specific country. Yellow lines going outward represent a country where males have greater access. Purple lines going inward indicate countries with a gender gap where females have greater access to the internet. Visually the viewer could see the divide as well as the scope and scale of the global problem.

Header Font

For the viz header, I wanted a font that had a feel representing the internet and digital. I selected Cebo, which is a Sans Serif font type. This font face expressed everything I wanted, plus it had one additional benefit - gaps. There are gaps in the lines making up the letters; I feel this helps emphasize the digital divide of the data.

Dynamic Switching

I created two viz, one showing the gender gap for internet access, the other viz the gender divide for mobile phone access. Placing the visualizations side by side lost the impact. I implemented code to allow a dropbox to select between the two views and permits the viewer to see both graphs while maintaining the visual impact.

Filtering

In a different project, I used data from the World Bank that had additional information about countries - Regions and Income Group. I added this information to this data set. I find it interesting to compare countries in similar grouping to see how they perform in a specific area. The filter allows the view to select any combination of Regions and Income Groups to understand how this information impacts the digital gap. I placed this selection towards the bottom of the design. It is not critical to understand the issue presented. These filters allow the view to explore the data deeper.

Challenges

Negative Data

The data set represented male dominance in the digital gap as positive and female dominance as negative. To me, this was backward. Reducing or eliminating the gender divide should have countries where females have greater access as positive, with the male greater access being harmful.

Since there were too few countries with greater female access, taking the absolute value and plotting both on the same chart would not work. I also wondered if Equal Access was a range instead of zero. If this idea is true, what would be the range, I wondered. I would need more time to explore the data and answer that question correctly.

My way of solving the data sign issue was to display the information in a unique way. I used a radial bar chart. This design allowed me to have greater male access moving outwards away from the center ring and greater female access moving inward from the center ring. It truly showed the divide. I prefer the World Wide Web Foundation calculation, a 'women-centered method' with a positive value for the female measurement. For any future data sets I create, I will now be more aware of the nuances in what the data shows.

Showing Gap

As discussed in the chart section above, I wanted a visualization that illustrated a gap - that left an impression of the problem at first glance. A radial bar chart achieved these goals.

Final Thoughts

This challenge was my first Makeover Monday. I enjoyed doing a small project. An added bonus was the Vis5 concept, which is creating visualizations for good. A new self goal developed - complete all the Vis5 challenges from this series. In addition, I will continue to participate in the Makeover Monday Community Challenges. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to do every challenge moving forward, but I will explore as many as I can.

Finding the right chart, colors, and fonts change the impact of the vis. My earlier exploration of the data focused on which countries were worst, which were better, and might be in the neutral zone. It was informative for me. The problem with those designs - the problem disappeared. I felt when doing a small project. The elevator pitch for the data is what one should feature. For this data set, I wanted to show the scale of the gap, how big the issue is currently. The radial bar chart allowed me to achieve that goal. Before this project, I had not used this chart type, so I learned how to create this graph for this project

What do you think? Let me know on Twitter @YvonFitz.